Good Guys VS Bad Guys: Facts Nobody Wants to KNow

TD- l don’t understand what you mean by saying “moral equivalency game”. Please explain it. I hate the evils done under any national authority—even the ones done by my own country.

Luhe—good point about Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize. What l like or don’t like about Obama’s is not based on race.

The blurring of distinction between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” is sometimes done through the governments themselves who manipulate history for economic reasons.

“....the Rape of Nanking remains an obscure incident. Although the death toll exceeds the immediate number of deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (140,000 and 70,000 respectively, by the end of 1945) and even the total civilian casualties for several European countries during the entire war (Great Britain lost 61,000 civilians, France 108,000, Belgium 101,000, and the Netherlands 242,000), the horrors ofthe Nanking massacre remain virtually unknown to people outside Asia. The Rape of Nanking did not penetrate the world consciousness in the same manner as the Jewish Holocaust or Hiroshima because the victims themselves remained silent. The custodian of the curtain of silence was politics.The People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and even the United States all contributed to the historical neglect of this event for reasons deeply rooted in the cold war. After the 1949 Communist revolution in China, neither the People's Republic of China nor Taiwan demanded wartime reparations from Japan (as Israel had from Germany) because the two governments were competing for Japanese trade and political recognition. And even the United States, faced with the threat of communism in the Soviet Union and mainland China, sought to ensure the friendship and loyalty of its former enemy Japan. In this manner, cold-war tensions permitted Japan to escape much of the intense critical examination that its wartime ally was forced to undergo.”Newsweek, Nov. 30, 1997

Moral equivalence is a close cousin to relativism. Both are forms of polemic.

A simple example of moral equivalence would be the claim (Regardless of whether it is made explicitly or implicitly) that U.S. use of nuclear weapons in WWII puts it on the same level of immorality as Nazi Germany.

TD-Moral equivalence is a close cousin to relativism. Both are forms of polemic.A simple example of moral equivalence would be the claim (Regardless of whether it is made explicitly or implicitly) that U.S. use of nuclear weapons in WWII puts it on the same level of immorality as Nazi Germany.

I wasn’t sure whether l couldn’t understand because of lack of education or because l couldn’t see moral equivalency in this discussion being of much use. It does not seem useful for purposes of cohabiting on this earth to measure who has done the worst things ever. Also, it would seem needful that no one should be above reproach. That would get us right back into assigning white hats and black hats again. That said there are individual acts in war that may or may not be judged as moral or immoral(the fire bombing of Dresden or the A-bombs on Japan) but certainly the entire progrsm of Nazi aggression was immoral no matter any individual military action and the Allies were justified in general.

But I really am wondering if polemics serve us well in this discussion. Polemics are (patience please) folks arguing slightly adverse views, two opposing sides figuring out who is right and who is wrong? Good guys bad guys ? Blurring lines again?

You have trouble equating the destruction of lives by the US nuclear bombs vs. the lives destroyed through the immorality of Nazi Germany and I have trouble with the torture, the murders, the rapes in the Nanking Massacre vs.a world that reoffends those lives by a failure to acknowledge this evil event. I truly don’t see how we can improve our lot in this world by trying to figure out good guys vs. bad. Somehow we have to be careful in talking about these things. But be honest too.

What Chinese man or woman who felt the atrocities in 1937 believe in the moral good of governments (even their own!) that effectively erased the history of their unbelievable slaughter and sexual abuse for political reasons? We prosecute Holocaust deniers, right? But for political reasons these victims were “buried” alive. This is a crime too.

Is there any value in holding a minimal standard for human conduct if we will not be fair? If we call out egregious wrongs when they happen- regardless of the players in the matter- maybe we would have less politicking and have more productive governing?

Luhe- thanks- there is a difference between co-existing and cohabiting. There are debates about which offers a happier outlook for folks. If you like l will amend my remark to suit you- we will continue to co-exist.

Politics is often a choice between two or more options, and we have to work out which is the least evil ('lesser of the two evils').To choose the lesser of the two evils, we have to work out if things are morally equivalent or not.-luhe

What you say is what l no longer accept as reasonable. The goal of many governments have become twisted somehow.The lesser of two evils isn’t “lesser” enough any more.

Was it you, luhe, or someone else who remarked that there is no difference between the two main parties in this country? That as far as war goes- they are the same? both indeed serve Big Money. So I can only choose between one black hat or another black hat?

No thanks.

I have to wonder if any creature on earth can survive if money has become the only “End” for which we strive instead of being only the means to that end.

The Rape of Nanking was a monumental evil. But read the Newsweek excerpt above—the aftermath of this massive crime must -MUST -make us wonder how people can be benefited by value systems in our governments that would rather do business with the Japanese perpetrators than acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Chinese suffered wholesale rape, slaughter and torture.

Were I young again, I would never be a soldier. Human life is not valued enough. Not here, not abroad. Not in the highest levels of power. To much greed.

( I must be finishing my spoons for market tomorrow . Shouldn’t be here but yet should be too. Very glad there is conversation on this. Appreciate that very much.)

Edit: Vanderhoven 7- your assessment fits with many of our best definition of a just war but for many of us the “good guys” seem to be driven by many of the forces that drove “bad guys” to fight”

Joseph Stalin made Hitler look like a piker. As the two Alexanders (Solschenizyn and Dolgun) describe in excruciating detail, he killed millions upon millions upon millions of his own people, not as an act of war but as an act of oppression.

To draw a comparison between him and those that opposed the expansion of his empire is an exercise in moral equivalence.

Like I said, the difference is not as clear today, but the logical fallacy is no less real.

Terry I agree. We do need to question the need for war and it is too often that the poorer people are recruited to do the dirty work. Britain does not have a clean moral past. It has its own gulags as does the USA. However a way out of this dilemma is to examine the nuances as TD mentions.

for example Hitler turned his cruelty inwards firstly against his own people and secondly he wanted Germania to rule the world and according to his own ethnic cleansing principles. Hitler stands out as well because he became pschoticlly bent on going further and further in killing. For example he took the idea of sacrificing oneself for one,s country to an extreme point so that if anyone disagreed regarding how many German lives were being lost to fight his wars he told hthem that it was glorious for Germans to keep on dying and this was what finally made his generals quietly recoil in horror (Karl Hack, OU Milton Keynes) link from futureLearn course, Empire).

Apart from that ordinary Germans were doing very well economically and people were glad he was in power so that when the time came to mourn over what had happened they were unable to confront the fact that they had enjoyed his rule and wanted the parts they liked and benefited from it to continue. I think there may be a lesson in this for us in endeavouring to move on with our lives.